I think we need to consult a lawyer on this one ... :-) ?Extract says that an empty index is "most often used" ... . This is a vague comment on use, **not** an exact specification of what x[] does.
The R language manual appears to be out of date or wrong: it specifies that "irrelevant" attributes are anything but names and dimnames in "Only names and in multi-dimensional arrays dim and dimnames attributes are retained." As you noted, this is false: > x <- matrix(1:6,3,2) > x[] [,1] [,2] [1,] 1 4 [2,] 2 5 [3,] 3 6 > attr(x,"fy")<- "funny" > x [,1] [,2] [1,] 1 4 [2,] 2 5 [3,] 3 6 attr(,"fy") [1] "funny" > x[] [,1] [,2] [1,] 1 4 [2,] 2 5 [3,] 3 6 attr(,"fy") [1] "funny" ## this contradicts the Language definition manual passage above Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things into it." -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Sébastien Durier <sdurier.s...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > In ?Extract, one can read "An empty index selects all values: this is most > often used to replace all the entries but keep the attributes" > No example is given but if x a vector I interpret this sentence as "x[]". > And in fact, all attributes seem to be preserved by this indexing. > But in the R language manual > (https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-lang.html#Indexing-by-vectors), > the following passage puzzles me : "Empty. The expression x[] returns x, but > drops “irrelevant” attributes from the result." I must misunderstand > something because it sounds contradictory with the help page. > > Thank you > > SD > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.